Gates start no dev backend: DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND=1 (set by the gate runner) keeps vite's offline answers and skips the PocketBase download, the process and its port

internal/backend-dev-plugin.mjs

@@ -226,6 +226,11 @@ export function backendDevPlugin(root, env = process.env) {
         process.once('SIGINT', () => { stopAll(); process.exit(0) })
         process.once('SIGTERM', () => { stopAll(); process.exit(0) })
       }
+      // ★ NO DEV BACKEND FOR A CHECK. A gate or a server-side-render check that boots vite from this config does not
+      // need PocketBase or the voice engine, and starting them cost a 32 MB download in a fresh worktree, a spawned
+      // process and a port clash (127.0.0.1:8090) with a dev server already running. DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND=1 keeps the
+      // quiet offline answers above and starts nothing; the gate runner (run-parallel.mjs) sets it for every gate.
+      if (process.env.DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND === '1') { logger.info('[dx-backend-dev] DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND=1: no dev backend started'); return }
       for (const b of backends) {
         if (b.remote) {
           logger.info(`[${b.name}] not started here: ${b.route} → ${b.remote}`)

internal/run-parallel.mjs

@@ -41,7 +41,7 @@
  * USAGE
  *   node internal/run-parallel.mjs --label=pre  -- check:a check:b ...   # runs `bun run <name>`
  *   node internal/run-parallel.mjs --bundles                             # BUNDLE=<d> bun x vite build, for every plugin-designs/<d>/
- *   env: GATES_CONCURRENCY (default min(cpus,6)) · BUILD_CONCURRENCY (default 4)
+ *   env: GATES_CONCURRENCY (default min(cpus,6)) · BUILD_CONCURRENCY (default 4) · every step gets DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND=1
  */
 import { spawn, spawnSync } from 'node:child_process'
 import { readdirSync, existsSync, readFileSync } from 'node:fs'
@@ -193,7 +193,7 @@ async function runStep(step) {
     const started = Date.now()
     const child = spawn(step.cmd, step.args, {
       cwd: ROOT,
-      env: { ...process.env, ...step.env },
+      env: { DOXA_NO_DEV_BACKEND: '1', ...process.env, ...step.env },   // gates never start the dev backends (backend-dev-plugin.mjs)
       stdio: ['ignore', 'pipe', 'pipe'],
     })
     let out = ''